Holiday Goodies

Most of my friends and family know how I love to make jewelry, so during the holiday season, I often get some great gifts. If you are looking for ideas to give or get, then you might want to consider some of the gifts described below.

Good things come in small packages. In one small package was this beautiful oval laboratory grown corundum ruby from the Rio Grande Gems and Findings catalog. (Unfortunately, the scan of this stone looks nothing like the real stone which is a very dark blood red color. Obviously, the light of my scanner makes it look much lighter.) The ruby is one of my favorite stones. With the science of growing various types of crystals, more of us can afford high quality (virtually flawless) precious stones. The hardness and refractive index of this laboratory grown ruby is the same as one that occurred naturally. I plan to set this stone an Easy Mount Setting from Tripp’s Manufacturing.

Other small gifts I've received in the past were a number of attachments to my dremel. I’ve mainly used my dremel for polishing, but it’s also handy for cutting holes in metal and sawing off pieces of metal. If you don’t have a dremel, you can find them at most home improvement stores. I originally got mine at Sears and my new attachments came from Home Depot.

Another great item under is a Benz-O-Matic pencil torch from the Rio Grande Tools and Equipment catalog. It attaches easily onto a propane tank, and viola, I’m ready to solder. This attachment has a four foot hose attached to it, so now I don’t have to lift up that cumbersome tank any more or wait till I go to my silversmithing class to get some soldering work done.

Finally, my husband and I bought a gift for ourselves, a Model CMF-400 Raytech Centrifugal Magnetic Finisher from Macaw Tools. This polishing machine will save us tons of time. Now when we cast charms, we spend a great deal of time filing and polishing each piece. Or worse, not finishing the pieces and letting them pile up in our tool boxes. With this new machine, once the filing is done, we just have to drop them in and 40 minutes later we have polished charms. These machines come in three other larger sizes which, of course, have larger price tags but also can handle a larger amount of charms and rings to polish. However, the 400 model is fine for the amount of work we do and the price was right.

All graphics created by Tammy Powley.